Contractors Bring Ronald McDonald House to Light

The grounds around the Ronald McDonald House in Washington, D.C., are now safer – thanks to landscape lighting installed recently by a professional team of John Deere Landscapes representatives and local Washington area contractors.

“This very welcome gift provides much-needed lighting around our site, especially during the winter months,” observed Sarah Glass, house manager of Ronald McDonald House. “The lights have made a significant difference in providing safer walkways and steps, while making the center more welcoming to our families.”

Located near Children’s Hospital in the Brookland area, the Ronald McDonald House offers accommodations and support for families with children who are patients at Children’s and other hospitals in the area.

As an act of community service, local landscape contractors collaborated with John Deere Landscapes – a national distributor of irrigation and landscape supplies – to offer a complete outdoor lighting installation at the site. John Deere Landscapes donated the materials, which included Vista Professional Outdoor Lighting fixtures and transformers.

“This project provided a great opportunity for hands-on training for landscape crews who are handling more lighting installations,” explained Jerry Schmidt, area manager for John Deere Landscapes. “We are very glad to help out the folks at Ronald McDonald House, who have been planning to install landscape lighting for safety reasons.”

Among the contractors involved were: Richard Shaeffer and Russ Carlton, R.J. Sunday Landscaping; Melvin Isales, Damascus Enterprises; Vladimir Polianov, Omni Landscape; Richard Schoenbeck, TLC Inc; and Eric Goodrich, Empire Landscape.

John Deere Landscapes representatives who participated include: Steve Gilmore, John Germuth, Jerry Schmidt and Kevin Rinschler from the Mt. Airy and Gaithersburg, Md., branches, along with Tom Petrush of Vista Professional Outdoor Lighting.

The author is assistant editor-Internet of Lawn & Landscape magazine and can be reached at aanderson@lawnandlandscape.com.